


That One Sunday

by ArsonEmbre



Series: Senior Year [8]
Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Feelings Realization, Friendship, Gen, Gender Identity, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Sexuality, Talking, supportive friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28371282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArsonEmbre/pseuds/ArsonEmbre
Summary: Roxas decides to call Xion and Lea. It's been a long time since they've talked and he misses them.
Relationships: Eventual Hayner/Roxas
Series: Senior Year [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1484090
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	That One Sunday

**Author's Note:**

> First I want to say I'm so so sorry for the long ass wait. I haven't forgotten at all!
> 
> Second, please forgive my description of what it means to be nonbinary. I wrote it as they understand it, which is a very very basic understanding of it. As someone who IS nonbinary, I feel like it's the best way someone who is just learning (at their age) can explain it. It's not meant to be a cold hard definition or meant to be described as "the third gender". I hope that's okay 🤍

“Hello?”

Immediately, Roxas was greeted with the sound of a sing-songy  _ hiya _ and a tired, but excited  _ hey. _ It was good to hear both of their voices again. So much time had passed since they’d all been able to talk, and he supposed that was his fault for getting caught up in the hype of the summer, and the following drama of the new school year. This was his attempt at reconnecting--at being a much better friend than he had been.

A smile spread across his face as he turned on the speaker and sat his phone down next to his pillow. On top of the pillow were instructions for how to crochet a beanie. Roxas had suffered the following year trying to learn how to knit in order to make a Christmas gift for Olette and that hadn’t gone too well. He found that crocheting, while still time consuming, was a lot easier to understand  _ and  _ practice. “I missed you guys,” he told them, trying to bring the crochet needle around the thread the way it was supposed to go. He was slow, but it was getting done properly.

Xion was the first to respond. “I missed  _ you!  _ I give Lea a pass because he’s got work and all but you gotta start calling me more. Or at least send a message.”

“Not to immediately incriminate myself  _ but  _ I’ve actually been on vacation for two weeks,” the older man says. Roxas’ brow furrows a bit. If he’s been on vacation, why did he sound so tired? Shouldn’t he have been more energized? He wanted to ask, but after how long it’s been since they last contacted one another, was it really any of his business?

The loud gasp from Xion tells him that he won’t have the chance to ask anyway. At least not right now. “YOU’VE BEEN SITTING ON YOUR BUT FOR TWO WEEKS AND HAVEN’T EVEN CALLED TO CHECK ON ME?”

“Listen, listen, listen--!”

“I’M HURT!”

“I CAN EXPLAIN! I HAVE--” the line gets quiet, and Roxas could hear him shuffle around a bit. “So the last time we talked, I got that counselor job, right?”

“Mm-hm...”

“I remember,” Roxas chimed in.

“So I get the job and everything starts to go really good. Like...better than it has in a  _ really  _ long time. I love this job and I love the people that I meet. However...I ended up getting really attached to this kid. And a lot of my coworkers could see it--he wouldn’t open up to aaanybody but me.” Lea quickly muttered something about another coworker paying more attention to him than most; Roxas filed that away to ask about later. “I felt like I really connected with the kid. But then he stopped showing up for counseling one day. One day turned into multiple and I ended up asking my boss about it. That didn’t go well. Things happened and I found out that the kid...isn’t with us anymore...and I took it really hard. So, I’m dealing with it.”

By then, Roxas had stopped trying to crochet and had taken to staring at his phone. He obviously had no idea that Lea had been going through that, but he would have liked to be there to help him in any way that he could. Lea had mentioned more than a couple times that he didn’t want to bog either of them down with his problems because they were so young, but he wasn’t so young that he couldn’t listen to someone vent. His own life wasn’t without problems, he knew how to help or distract when someone needed it.

“I’m so sorry,” he almost whispered. “I’m gonna say it again, but I hope you know that you don’t have to go through stuff alone.”

“Yeah, we’re literally just a message away. I’m sorry for yelling...” Xion added.

Roxas could hear a chuckle. “Don’t worry about it, I knew you were joking. I wanted to wait until I was in sort of a better state of mind to tell you guys because I was not uh...coherent? For the first half of that first week.”

“So you’re doing at least a little better?” Xion asked.

“I am,” he said, and the peace in his voice sounded genuine. “My coworker’s been coming over every single day to check on me and it’s been helping. I tell you--the irony of a counselor counseling another counselor about counseling is the funniest shit ever.”

_ That  _ was his chance to ask. “Is this the same coworker who has been paying you all that special attention before?”

There was a beat of silence. “I didn’t say  _ special  _ attention, I said  _ more  _ attention.”

“But don’t they mean the same thing?”

Xion hummed. “Are you implying that Lea has a secret girlfriend that he’s not telling us about?”

More silence. At first, Roxas thought it was just the natural silence that they tended to fall into. It didn’t take long for him to realize that this one was tense and intentional. His eyes narrow. He hadn’t meant to imply anything, but now he was growing more and more suspicious. “Lea...?”

“We are  _ not  _ dating yet.”

Roxas’ face broke out into an even bigger smile as he and Xion both shout into their receivers. Xion’s shouts consisting of “more secrets?!” while Roxas stuck with a comfortable “scandalous!”

“No, no, no, no! There are no secrets and this is not a scandal!” Xion and Roxas both broke out into laughter as he scrambled to explain himself. “He’s just coming to--”

Lea received a collective, confused, “HE?!”

“CAN I SPEAK?!”

Xion spoke before Roxas could even open his mouth. “No I’m sewing your mouth shut since you wanna act all quiet all of a sudden.”

“ _ Get his ass _ .”

“GUYS PLEASE?”

And then they were laughing again. God, had he missed terrorizing Lea with Xion. It was becoming harder and harder to remember why they had stopped having these phone calls so frequently in the first place. If he really thought about it, what was stopping them from picking them back up? They had obviously missed out on a lot of catching up. Instead of suggesting that right away, Roxas shook his head with a happy sigh, resuming winding the yarn around the crochet needle. “I missed you guys.”

“Missed you too!”

“You missed making a fool out of me-- _ that’s _ what you goddamn missed...” After another bout of giggles, Lea spoke again. “Someone else talk now, my mouth is tired.”

“Is it tired because it doesn’t wanna go through the trouble of explaining your new boyfriend?” Roxas asked, a sly smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

“I’m never having children. Thank you for helping me realize that.”

Roxas could never forget how funny the three of them were whenever they got together for anything. It was one of his favorite things in the world.

“Ooh! Is it okay if I talk next? I actually have something really exciting to announce,” Xion said. Roxas could hear the beaming smile in her voice, and it actually made him curious to know what was going on in her life. It wasn’t like he had anything major to talk about anyway. 

He shrugged. “I’m listening.”

“Okay,  _ so _ ,” he could hear Xion clap her hands together the way she always did when she was about to either go on a tangent, talk about something serious, or both. He never understood why she did it, but it was something he’d accepted a while ago. That was her thing. He wouldn’t recognize her if she ever stopped doing that. “What I’m about to say is really important, so could you please, please, please hear me out and be gentle?”

His brow furrowed. “Yeah, sure.”

“Always, Shi. What’s up?”

Xion let out a breath. “So I’ve been talking to a really close friend of mine for a while--she’s really smart and has been so helpful to me since, like, the  _ minute _ we met. We’ve been talking for so long about literally everything that I learned a ton of stuff about her...and she’s been helping me discover some things about myself. So um...do you think you guys could start using they/them for me instead of calling me she? I just want to try it out and see how it feels.”

For a second time, Roxas stopped working on his project to look at his phone. The line was silent for an uncomfortable amount of time, and he supposed he was waiting for Lea to speak up first. When he didn’t, Roxas ended up nodding. “Yeah! So like, instead of saying  _ she’s in the cafeteria  _ you want me to say  _ them _ wait, no  _ they’re in the cafeteria _ ?”

“Yeah! Exactly like that.”

Now Lea decided to speak up. “Wait, did you just come out as nonbinary?”

“Non...who?”

“I’m not sure yet. My friend is still helping me figure things out, and she says I can take however long I want to figure it out. Oh--Roxas, nonbinary is a gender identity. Well, from what I understand it’s an identity and a spectrum? Like you can be anywhere in between and it’s all still the same, but there are other labels there too? I just...I don’t know if I’m the best person to explain it. I just know that I’m definitely not a boy, but I don’t feel like a girl either. Sometimes I feel more boyish than I do girlish, and sometimes I feel really girlish and less boyish. It changes.”

Roxas lifted his hand to scratch his scalp with his crochet needle. He was trying his very best to understand so that he could support them, but his mind was starting to spin. He decided that when everyone hung up, he would do some reading. It would make more sense to him if he could consume the information on his own in his own time. “S-So if we are using they and them for you now, we’re not allowed to call you a girl, right?”

“Right.”

“So what do we call you?”

“You just...well...uh...”

“I have a friend that’s nonbinary,” Lea finally spoke up. “They go by they/them and we all use gender neutral pronouns for them. They get called sibling, partner, parent, stuff like that. Usually we just say person in place of man or woman, but that can be different from person to person. Shi, if you’d wanna talk to someone that’s been IDing as nonbinary for six years, I could send you their contact.”

“Are you sure that’s okay? They wouldn’t mind?”

“Nah, I’ll just give them a heads up and they’ll be cool with it. They’re really sweet and one of my closest friends.”

“Okay...then yeah. I’d love to talk to them!”

Although Roxas was slowly coming to understand what was going on, he knew one thing: he supported them. Person, partner, sibling. He would do his very best to remember that. “I thiiink I got it. But if I slip up, please remind me. I don’t want to call you something that you don’t want to be called.”

“I got you. But please don’t blow it out of proportion if you do mess up. Just use the correct pronoun and keep going. I had one person do that to me already and it was really weird standing there watching them apologize so much for an honest mistake.”

“I can do that, yeah. Thank you for telling us,” Roxas smiled. “It really means a lot that you trust us enough to tell us this. I mean it.”

They laughed a bit. “I was really scared. I didn’t think either of you would react badly but there’s just...something about having to say it out loud that’s intimidating. The weight I was feeling is gone and it feels really good, but every moment leading up to it is just  _ anxiety _ . You know what I mean?”

“I hear you.”

“Tch, wait until you bring all your adult friends together to tell them you think you’re gay and they all say  _ I know _ . In UNISON.”

“LEA.”

“Lea?!”

“If you think I’m kidding, I’m not. Everyone  _ but  _ me knew.”

“Does this also have to do with your not-yet-boyfriend?” Roxas teased.

“Gee, Roxas, why don’t you tell us about your life? What secrets are you hiding?”

Roxas, feeling a little too cocky about his painfully boring life, smirke.    
“Absolutely nothing. No, not  _ absolutely  _ nothing. Me and the gang all made resolutions for our last year of high school and we swore to each other that we’d get them done before we graduate. Though I dunno how easy that’s gonna be seeing as two of them aren’t friends anymore.”

“Whaaaat?”

“Wait, which ones? Is Pence okay?”

At the mention of Pence, Roxas’ smile fell. How did Xion know that there was anything wrong with Pence? They hadn’t seen him for more than thirty seconds in so many days. “I don’t think so, then again I haven’t seen much of him recently. Why do you ask?”

“He came up to me the other day asking about the cooking club. I think he wants to join it. He’s actually the reason I bullied you all into talking to me. I only ask because he just wanted to join all of a sudden when he’s usually stuck to you, Hayner, and Olette like glue.”

“Yeah it’s...ugh, Pence and Hayner aren’t talking anymore. Hayner said some insensitive shit and I don’t even really think he meant it to be mean, but Pence didn’t take it well and now he just. Cut off the friendship. Hay definitely isn’t taking it well at all, so I went over to his house yesterday and we played Dying Days again.” A smile crept onto his face. “I sort of got him to admit that he likes playing the game with me even though he says he hates it so I won a battle--we also got into a fight--it was all jokes, though--and I made him think that he twisted my arm the wrong way and he got so worried before I smacked him in his stupid face--the  _ noise  _ he made was--!”

“Rox,  _ Rox! _ ” Lea laughed. Of course, he didn’t understand why Lea was laughing, or why Xion was chiming in with their own giggles.

“Y-Yes?”

“Slow down. You said a million words in ten seconds. I didn’t catch half of that last bit.”

“Oh. I just said that Hayner and I played Dying Days and I’m slowly getting him to admit that he likes playing it. This past week has been weird with the whole Pence and Hayner not talking thing, but yesterday was so fun. It’s rare that I get moments alone where it’s just me and him and I think I really needed yesterday.”

“Oh yeah?” Lea asked. It didn’t sound like a question, it sounded like he was being teased somehow. Roxas very quickly recognized that tone of voice and he didn’t like it.

“Yeah...” he spoke slowly. “I did.”

A snicker. “Shi, do you hear it too?”

“It’s so fucking loud, god.”

“Huh…? What’s loud--I don’t hear anything.”

“ _ Okay _ .” Over the line, Roxas could hear Xion shuffling around. “I’m gonna ask you a question. It’s just pure curiosity, and you don’t have to answer it at all if you don’t want to.”

Roxas’ work with the crochet needle gets slower as he shifts the majority of his focus onto their words. “Me or Lea?”

“You.”

“Okay…?”

“Do you--actually, hold on. I’m not sure if there’s a more polite way to phrase this.” There were a few beats of silence that followed and it made Roxas anxious. It was obvious that they were going to ask a question about Hayner, but why would they need to? His current worst fear was that they had been talking to Pence and something happened to make them see him as a bad person. Although he knew that he shouldn’t have expected that from Pence. He had never done a single thing that warranted Roxas’ doubt.

No, Pence wasn’t one to shit talk or spread rumors about anyone, even the people he disliked. He was the one who kept his mouth shut no matter how much it hurt him. And that had been part of the original problem, right? Sure, Hayner could make an ass of himself every now and again, but if Pence had told him that his words were bothering him in the first place, he was sure that Hayner would have stopped and had some consideration for his feelings. He wasn’t heartless. He was capable of empathy and Roxas  _ knew  _ that.

They were both his best friends. He didn’t want to have an opinion and he didn’t want to be put in the middle.

“What exactly do you think of Hayner?”

Oh. Oh, that was easy! “Coolest guy on the planet, hands down. It’s like...you ever find a person that’s so awesome that it feels like you fit together like puzzle pieces? He’s that kind of friend to me.”

“And I’m so glad you have that in him,” Xion told him. There wasn’t a single trace of anger or jealousy in their tone, and for some reason, that fact alone filled him with so much relief. Roxas didn’t make a habit of ranking his friends, but he knew himself well enough to say that if Hayner called right that second, he would hang up. “But are you sure that that’s a friendship?”

His brow rose, and the relief he felt quickly dissipated. “Why wouldn’t it be? Did someone say something?”

“Can I please just ask him?” Lea interrupted.

“No,  _ shut up _ ,” they hissed. “I’m trying to do this as delicately as I can, but I also don’t want to beat around the bush, so I’m sorry if I’m making you worry. It’s nothing bad. I just want to know if you might be confusing your feelings for him as  _ friendship  _ when it’s actually...romantic?”

The only time Roxas’ mind had hit a harder blank than that moment was the first day he was introduced to a single extra credit trigonometry problem. For a long while, he didn’t speak because there was  _ nothing  _ going on in his head. It had never been that silent before, there had never been a time where he couldn’t  _ think. _ And yet his heart felt like it was going to keep constricting until it squeezed itself out of existence completely.

After all the mental silence, the first thought that broke through the haze was  _ Shouldn’t I say no? _ The next was a question of why that should even be a question. Because he absolutely should have said no. He wet his lips before parting them, but nothing came of it. No was such a simple answer. No wouldn’t change or complicate things. No would allow him to keep going on as if everything was normal. But the ache in his chest told him that this wasn’t normal, and that maybe there was a reason why he was almost physically unable to deny it.

“I-I’m sorry?” he asked slowly.

Although there was patience in their voice, their words did nothing to soothe him. “Do you like Hayner, Roxas?”

He swallowed, only vaguely aware of his hand tightening around the needle and yarn in his hands. If the answer was no, then what was with the sudden burn on his skin? Why could he suddenly not speak? Why did he blank like that? All of that should have been his answer, correct?

No didn’t feel right, but yes didn’t feel fair.

“I can’t,” he ended up saying instead. “We’re practically like brothers. He’s allowed in my house whenever he wants and I can go to his just the same. We call each other’s moms Mom and have family dinners where we invite each other--”

“Yeah, but you don’t really talk about him like a brother,” Lea added. “I think everyone kind of admires the people that they choose to be their family, but there’s a difference between admiration and...what  _ you’re _ doing.” Xion didn’t scold him for saying it either. So was it true, then?

What was he doing? He didn’t see much of a difference between how he treated Hayner versus everyone else...minus the hanging up on them thing but he was sure that they had people in their lives that they would hang up on him for. He was about to ask them what the difference was, or what it was that he was doing, when his mind was brought back to the day that Hayner had gotten rejected. Roxas felt horrible for, once again, feeling relieved, and he’d thought that he was a bad friend for it. But it would make more sense to him to know that he felt that relief because 

of  _ that  _ rather than him being jealous of something that would make Hayner really happy.

No, that was a half truth. Roxas  _ had  _ been the tiniest bit jealous because he was afraid that they wouldn’t get to spend as much time with him anymore if they did get together. Not Olette  _ and  _ Hayner...just Hayner. Wouldn’t that make him a worse person than he already thought he was?

_ Something about saying it out loud that’s intimidating. _

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have even asked. We can change the subject if you like?” Xion offered.

At the first sign of an out, he nodded. “Please.”

The conversation did change--almost immediately too. Xion went on to talk about a new show that she had gotten into recently and it turned out that Axel had just gotten into the same one. It was something that Roxas had already watched and finished, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be as passionate about it as they were. He was the one who had wanted to change the topic, but his mind wouldn’t follow directions.

One friendship had already been ruined so early on in the school year. He didn’t want him or his feelings to be the cause of another one.


End file.
